"Life in Progress"

Dallas ends water fluoridation

Anti-fluoridation activists and knowledgeable consumers have finally tipped the scale, and now Dallas will cease poisoning its water supply with sodium fluoride, saving taxpayers a million dollars annually, along with a few IQ points.

After months of regular visits by citizens to city council meetings, the Dallas City Council decided last week to stop water fluoridation. Perhaps it was economic incentive alone that allowed the council to decide to end five decades of water fluoridation, or the tireless work of citizens who continuously probed council members about why they would fluoridate city water when it has been proven to be very dangerous to human health.

NBC 5 Dallas/Fort Worth reported that the results from the last meeting surprised anti-fluoridation activists, who have been trying to get someone to listen to them about this industrial chemical and its risks for years.

Dallas City Council Member Sheffie Kadane said he discussed ending fluoridation with City Manager A.C. Gonzalez, citing Kadane as saying:

“We don’t need it and we’d just save a million dollars that we can use for something else. … We’re looking into seeing what we can do immediately so we can get those funds up front now.”

Kadane was backed by Council members Scott Griggs and Jennifer Staubach Gates. Anti-fluoridation activist Regina Imburgia said: “Yeah. … This is major big. I knew we would prevail. It only makes sense. We’re spending too much money on an ineffective program”.

Imburgia said that there was no need to put fluoride in water when it had obvious health risks, and that people who really wanted fluoride to prevent tooth decay could just squeeze it out of a tube of toothpaste.

City council members focused on the savings of ending fluoridation, rather than the fact that its removal from municipal water was a public health concern.

Health Concerns over Toxic Fluoride:

There have been multiple studies proving that fluoride is not metabolized easily by the body, and accumulates in the tissues and bones (much like glyphosate – a main ingredient in pesticides). Other studies have proven that accumulated fluoride can alter the activities of some enzymes involved in free-radical metabolism and whole brain functioning. Philippe Grandjean MD from the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard School of Public Health, and Philip Landrigan MD, from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt Sinai, New York, state that industrial chemicals can injure the developing brain in children, lowering their memory and IQ.

Fluoride is among five scientifically identified industrial chemicals that lead to neurological impairment:

Lead

Methylmercury

Polychlorinated biphenyls

Arsenic

Fluoride

Researchers Grandjean and Landrigan postulate that there are even more neurotoxicants which remain undiscovered, and propose a global prevention strategy to control what they describe as the pandemic of developmental neurotoxicity.

Anti-fluoridation advocates in Dallas will get their water fluoride free now, even if it is the last decades’ poor economy driving the point home to city officials.